The Little Rocks began their residency as Junior's house band in April 1961. We performed three sets per night on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. (Once Alvin and I graduated from high school in June, we added two sets per night on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays as well.) And we had our first "regular" right from the get-go - Scooter. He was nice enough to pack my drum set into his van and drive us down to Junior's on our first night. He also stuck around for the first set, and showed up maybe once a week after that. "Not a huge fan of that rock and roll, but I like how you kids play it," he often told us.

We used a set list the first few nights, but we quickly ditched that. We'd just look at each other after each song, and one of us would suggest the next song. "'Perfidia'." "'Topsy'." "'Sugar Mountain Stomp'." The other two would nod, I'd count off the beat, and away we'd go. Our sets got tighter, and if we didn't exactly have girls swooning at our feet, we at least appeared to be giving people a good night out.

Then, one night, the whole thing almost fell apart.

"I used to order a rum and coke as soon as I got to Junior's," Alvin says, a bit uncomfortably. "Standard size. I'd keep it next to your drum set, and just sip it on occasion all through the night. Usually didn't even finish it. No big deal. Well, I had been doing a lot of yard work at Mrs. Gorman's one day, and I showed up to Junior's really thirsty. I ended up downing my rum and coke right away, and then I ordered a second and then a third one. Ran the Alvin charm by the bartender - 'it's OK, of course I can handle it' - and more or less polished that third one off just as we started out first number."

Simon and I didn't see Alvin slam down three drinks in such a short time, but we started noticing the effects a few songs into the first set. One of his solos was a bit sloppy, then he missed a fairly obvious chord change in the next song. I noticed Simon staring at him more and more. But things finally fell apart when Alvin dropped behind the beat on "Honky Tonk", a song he should have been able to play in his sleep.

As that song limped to a close, amid a smattering of polite applause, Simon walked up to the microphone and announced, "Thank you. There will be a short intermission." Alvin tried to call out the next number, but Simon threw off his bass, then tore at Alvin's guitar until the strap came undone, and the guitar clattered to the stage. Then Simon grabbed him by the ear and dragged him offstage. (Simon later told me he had dragged him off by his ear "because I was unable to easily reach his tail.")

"Simon hauled me off to a storage room in back, closed the door behind us, and just started laying into me," admits Alvin. "I tried talking back a bit, but he wasn't having any of it. He shouted, yelled, jabbed his finger in my chest. Told me I was ruining everything, how could I do this to you and him. By the end of his rant, I was crying. Like, literally sobbing. I had tears running down my cheeks. Probably in part because the rum had kicked in, but mainly because he was doing a great job of making me feel like shit."

Simon shakes his head. "I was livid, no question. I unleashed on him as I never had before or since. But I also believed that exaggerating my rage might solidify the message. Once he began crying, I decided he had truly comprehended the consequences of his actions. I took him out into the alley, let him vomit up the drinks, then led him to the diner next door for coffee. He had never had coffee before that night, but I forced him to drink it regardless."

Meanwhile, I was left sitting behind my drum set like an idiot, so I slipped off to the bar and had a Coke. But long after I thought my brothers would've returned, I was still sitting there by myself. The bartender and patrons began glancing over at the stage area, then at me, rather pointedly. It got uncomfortable enough that I finally got back up on stage. I wasn't sure what I was going to do - a fifty-minute drum solo? - but I spied Simon's bag off to the side of the stage. Curious, I dug inside, and pulled out his ukulele. We used to be a song or two where Simon played ukulele, but those had long since been dropped from our set list. Apparently, he had never bothered to take it out of his bag.

It'd been a while since I played one of these things. Could I still do it? I quickly checked the tuning, and then quietly strummed a chord. Hm, maybe. I looked up, and the crowd was watching me expectantly. Well, no backing out now. I walked over to Alvin's microphone and started talking.

"Uh, hi, folks! The other two Little Rocks will be back in just a bit. But in the meantime, I'm going to do something I've never done on stage before - play the ukulele." This brought both sympathetic smiles and worried looks from the crowd. "Um, maybe you can help me out with the words, if you know them."

I stepped back a bit, took a deep breath, and tried to remember the chord changes. Nodding my head, I began strumming, taking the song quite a bit slower than I had the last time I played it, almost a decade before. I bopped my head along, then stepped up to the microphone and started singing.

"Way down in the Congo land lived a happy chimpanzee
She loved a monkey with a long tail
Lordy, how she loved him
Each night he would find her there
Swinging from the coconut tree
And the monkey gay
At the break of day
Loved to hear her chimpie say..."

I looked out at the audience with a look somewhere between expectation and desperation. Thankfully, a few folks joined in.

"Aba daba daba daba daba daba dab, said the chimpie to the monk.
Daba daba daba daba daba daba dab, said the monkey to the chimp..."

I must have looked relieved, because a few more people joined in as the chorus went on.

"...then the big baboon, one night in June,
He married them, and very soon,
They went upon their aba daba honeymoon!"

"After Alvin finished his coffee," Simon recalls, "I marched him through the alley and back into Junior's. I was somewhat bewildered when I heard music and singing. It wasn't until I drew closer that I recognized 'Aba Daba Honeymoon'." Simon grinned. "And I was impressed. Not so much at your rendition, but in the attempt. Six months previous, Theodore Chipmunk would never have ventured an attempt entertaining a crowd alone. Clearly your self-confidence had increased significantly."

Impressed or not, Simon mainly looked angry as he and Alvin got back on stage during the applause after my solo turn. I put the ukulele back in the bag, and watched as Simon snatched the guitar from the stage before Alvin could get to it. Simon then indicated for Alvin to take the bass. I took my place back behind the drum set, wondering what was going on.

Simon stepped up to the microphone. "I apologize for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. We would like to perform some songs we recorded a year or two ago." He turned back to me and said, "Uh-Huh". The Nutty Squirrels song? I pulled in my microphone close to me, and tried to remember how that song went - it had been at least a year since I had played it, after all. Simon turned to Alvin and told him the basic bass pattern. "Try to keep up, and above all, stay out of our way," he hissed.

We got through that one pretty well, with Alvin quietly and unobtrusively picking out the bassline. Then Simon called for "Uh-Oh!", and after that, "Salt Peanuts". Simon must have decided that Alvin had sobered up enough after that number, as he unslung the guitar and handed it hack to him. Alvin still looked a bit sick but mainly looked relieved at that point. His playing was a bit restrained for the rest of the night, and he let Simon and me call out all of the song selections. But we at least finished the set on solid ground.

We didn't talk about it on the cab ride home, other than for Simon to say "That is not happening again." Alvin just looked miserable and nodded.

"I switched to plain Coke after that," said Alvin. "Any time I was tempted to have a drink during a gig, I'd hear 'Aba Daba Honeymoon' run through my head. I had a couple more run-ins with drinking later on, but never on stage."

As the summer went on, I start mulling over the idea of finally placing that personal ad that I had written, in an attempt to get more drumming work. But for all those positives that Simon saw, there was one big negative (well, besides me being a chipmunk) - I had no way to get me and my drums to a gig. I couldn't call Scooter to drive me around any time I needed a lift, and although my drum set would fit into some of the largest taxis, I couldn't count on lucking out and hailing one every time.

So I asked Scooter one Saturday after karate - how had he gotten his van retrofitted? How much did it cost? And would I be able to get one for me?

Scooter said all that wouldn't be too much of a problem, but he pointed out that there was still one more obstacle - I didn't know how to drive. "Not much use in having a truck done up for ya if you can't drive it, now, is there?" he said. So he made me an offer - pay for his karate lessons for the rest of the summer, and he'd teach me to drive in his van. That sounded like a good plan to me! And so, every Saturday for the rest of the summer, Scooter and I would go to karate class, eat lunch, and then head out to a vacant parking lot where he taught me to drive. He may not have been the best instructor - he tended to get a little overexcited if he thought I was even close to making a mistake. But still, he got the job done. He also helped me find a green 1958 Chevy pickup truck, which we took to this repair shop to be retrofitted. And by the close of August 1961, I was a fully-licensed driver with his own truck.

I finally did post an ad at the music shop in early August, but not my "Drummer Available" one. Instead, Alvin and I were looking for a replacement bass player for The Little Rocks. Simon was about to start school a fair distance away, and wouldn't be available anymore. I think we got five responses to the ad. Two of the guys weren't very good, and two of the others had no interest in playing with a couple of chipmunks. And that left one guy - Skip.

Like Alvin and me, Skip was a recent high school graduate hoping to "make it" as a musician. He was eager to join the Little Rocks, but he had a few strikes against him. He had played in a band in high school, but he had never played anything but school dances. Also, Skip was used to being one of six musicians on stage, and he found it a little daunting at the prospect of suddenly being one of three. He couldn't just unobtrusively slip into the background, especially being so much taller than his bandmates. But we decided to see if we could make things work.

Skip may not have been an incredible musician, but he tried to make up for it by being really focused. He came to our gigs, carefully watching Simon as he played each song, taking notes, and practicing. During Simon's last week, he traded off with him on bass at the Little Rocks gigs - first just doing the easiest songs, and gradually doing more and more of the songs as the week progressed. And by the last gig, he was set to take over.

The last weekend of August, I drove Simon and his stuff to the dorms at UCLA - my first time being separated from my brother for any real length of time. And it hurt, a lot. I thought I was prepared for it, but emotionally I was a wreck. For the first few nights he was gone, I just lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, missing him.

The following Tuesday, we had our first gig at Junior's with just Alvin, me and Skip. Skip had lettered in track and field, and so he wore his varsity jacket to the gigs, even though the color scheme was different from ours. He had obviously been practicing all weekend, and he played better than we had ever seen him play. Our sets were tight, and the crowd responded well.

...and it wasn't right. That's what I kept thinking the entire night. It just wasn't right.

I spent another sleepless night mulling it over, and finally decided that I was simply too attached to Simon. After all, I had played precisely one song without Simon up until he was about to leave - "Almost Good". If I was going to pick up additional gigs as a drummer, I was just going to have to get used to playing with different people.

So the next night, I sort of pushed myself into a new mindset. This band wasn't now The Little Rocks with a guy filling in for Simon. This band now was The Little Rocks. It was different, sure, but this is what it was now. I still missed Simon a lot, but I stopped viewing Skip as a bad substitute for him. He was his own guy, with his own contributions to make. And day by day, the gigs started getting more enjoyable again.

That said, there was a bit of strife brought into the band. Not from Skip directly, but from a few of his friends. They came by a few times to watch, and once during the set breaks, Alvin and I overheard them giving Skip a hard time about "playing second fiddle to a bunch of vermin". Skip half-heartedly tried standing up for us but I could tell he was starting to feel weird about it afterwards. I decided to make a point of telling him he did a great job at the end of the night. I'm assuming it helped, because he stuck with us, and eventually those friends of his stopped showing up.

I called Simon at school every Monday, since we had the night off. His first few reports from college were enthusiastic. He loved his classes, and the other students at least seemed to accept having a chipmunk around. But by the end of September, the shine was starting to come off.

"Classes were still enjoyable - they were challenging, although easier than I had anticipated. But my roommate Phillip had quickly tired of my presence. He labored under a misconception that I was somehow interfering with his social life. He stated he would never truly integrate into college life so long as he was 'the guy rooming with the rat'. Why he persisted in calling me a rat was beyond my comprehension."

To make matters worse, The Alvin Show had just premiered. "I did not greatly resemble my cartoon counterpart. However, my name and voice were identical to his. So students began to ask, and I had to admit that yes, I had voiced that character for television. This aggravated Phillip further, as he now felt that living with 'that stupid singing cartoon rat' was what caused his unpopularity, rather than his rather abrasive personality."

Although Simon managed to make some friends, and to keep things somewhat civil with Phillip, he realized that his connection to the Chipmunks brand was doing him more harm than good. "It was at this time that I created my pseudonym. I took the name for the biological genus of chipmunk - tamias - and corrupted it to Thomas. I then shunted my first name to my surname, which resulted in the name 'Thomas Simeon'. I requested that both students and professors use that name for me, suggesting but not directly stating that it was my actual name. And this helped immeasurably. Even if someone was cognizant that I had provided a voice on the television show, the simple name change was enough for them to view it as an acting role, rather than a portrayal of myself."

The name change ended up following Simon through his career. "All of my professional positions, and all of my published works, have been under the name Thomas Simeon. Which I feel is for the best. Would anyone accept a scholarly work from a Professor Chipmunk?"

But while the Alvin Show presented a bit of a problem for Simon, it proved a non-entity for The Little Rocks. After all, The Chipmunks were three black-and-white blobs singing children's songs, while The Little Rocks were two actual chipmunks and a human pounding out instrumental rock. Occasionally, somebody in the audience might yell out for us to play "Christmas Don't Be Late", but when they did, we'd just shake our heads and smile.